Mama Lor Werribee review: Filipino barbecue, bakery worth the pig-out

This Filipino eatery that’s part bakery, part-barbecue restaurant in Werribee’s main street gifts us pork in all its glorious forms.

I am yet to meet a pork dish I don’t like.

I’ve eaten my weight in jamon in Madrid and currywurst in Berlin and thought I’d died and gone to heaven when I discovered Lyon’s bouchons served les grattons as a gratis snack — which I probably should’ve after demolishing however many bowls of pork rind fried in pork fat.

Whether it’s the silken, iron-ish softness that pig’s blood lends to the Italian chocolate pudding known as sanguinaccio dolce, or the strangely addictive pissoir-tang of France’s famous intestine sausage andouillette, to the more approachable charms of roasted pork belly in a banh mi.

Unlike Samuel L Jackson, I most definitely do dig on swine.

And to that list of the world’s great pig dishes, I now add sisig.

One of the Philippines’ most famous dishes, on a cast-iron plate that’s sizzling hot and swirling with smoke, a fine dice of porky bits — skin-crunchy fatty jowl, chewy ear and soft liver – is tossed through and equally fine dice of red and green capsicum and red onion. Served with a slice of lemon – and an optional egg cracked on top (recommended) – it’s rich but vinegar bright and incredibly moreish ($16.50)

Sizzling sisig. Picture: Nicki Connolly.

There’s a lot of pork to put on your fork at Mama Lor, a Filipino restaurant that opened at the end of 2019 on the rather brilliant international eat street that is Werribee’s Watton St.

Part bakery, part barbecue restaurant, this Mama Lor joins the original in Sydney’s Rooty Hill and both have the same focus on Filipino fare the diaspora miss most.

I’m here on the emailed recommendation of a reader (thanks Geoff) and the restaurant’s tagline “there’s no place like home” is obviously striking a chord for I’m lucky to get a table this midweek lunchtime, the dining room full of multigenerational tables of Filipinos here for that sisig and lechon (roasted suckling pig) and crispy pata (fried pork hock); for barbecued pork skewers and massive platters of pancit bihon (stir fried noodles with pork and veg) and sinigang na baboy (pork belly in tamarind soup).

Lechon belly. Picture: Nicki Connolly.

Lechon is to Cebu as laneways are to Melbourne and Mama Lor’s version is as shatteringly crisp-skinned and tender, fragrant and tasty as I remember eating it in situ, a $12 serve ample for a couple, the $45 family sized platter as popular today as the steamed-then-deep fried pork hock that’s a hulking mass of crackling crunch and gelatinous, flaky meat ($20).

Grilled eggplant omelette. Picture: Nicki Connolly

To start there’s more crisp crunchiness fresh from the fryer, including baskets of calamari, chicken skin and fish nuggets ($10 each), but for a more elegant, refined and veg-forward opener, the tortang talong, or eggplant omelette, is a hands-down winning version of this breakfast-lunch dish.

A whole baby eggplant is charred over flame, skinned and wrapped in a delicately fluffy omelette. Topped with diced tomato and spring onion, it’s smoky, soft and fabulously moreish ($12).

It’s not all pork. Tiny baby squid served whole, tentacles and all, come piled high on a plate swimming in a sticky ink-black, sweet-sharp “adobo-style” sauce, green and red capsicum adding colour and crunch. The squid is tender, meaty and moreish ($14) and goes well with a cold, crisp San Miguel beer ($8).

Sinigang na hipon is a sour soup in which prawns are the star.

Adobong baby squid. Picture: Nicki Connolly.

In a broth bitey with tamarind sharpness, along with eggplant, tomato and water spinach, at least six big head-on beauties are there to shell, eat the tail and suck the heads dry ($18).

With a telly screening daytime soaps, numbers on the table and ballad-y pop on rotation, it’s a simple, functional space softened by a wall of greenery that never needs watering, the bakery out back suppling a range of Filipino cakes and sweets to grab for home when paying the bill out front, including ensaymada (brioche topped with creamed butter and grated cheese), Cebu’s tangy butter cake (torta Cebuana) and hopia ube, a pastry that’s filled with purple yam.

Offering homesick Filipinos an authentic taste of home, Mama Lor is a slice of Island life in the heart of the west that’s worth seeking out for a proper pig out, lechon and all.

Mama Lor in Werribee. Picture: Nicki Connolly.

MAMA LOR

187 Watton St, Werribee

Open: Daily from 10am.

mamalor.com